text=#000000 Kate Milligan Edger (1857–1935) was the first woman to graduate from the University of NZ, in 1876, and one of the first women graduates in what was then the British Empire. She was the daughter of the Rev Samuel Edger of Berkshire, the spiritual leader of the Nonconformist Settlement Association (the Albertlanders) who left London on 29 May 1862 on the Matilda Wattenbach and the Hanover and in time settled on the Kaipara Harbour, Northland. The Edger family moved to Auckland during the 1860s and the children were educated at home, until Kate went to Auckland College and Grammar School. She gained a university scholarship in 1874, another in natural philosophy and chemistry in 1875, and she was a senior scholar in Latin and mathematics in 1876 when she qualified for admission to the degree of Bachelor of Arts. She was 20 when the degree was conferred upon her in 1877. She became assistant principal at Christchurch Girls’ High School, principal at Nelson College for Girls and principal of the Ponsonby College for Girls in Auckland. She married a Congregational minister, the Rev William A Evans in 1890 and devoted the rest of her life to advancing the interests of the feminist movement.
text=#000000 Fred Dagg is the enduring name of a comic character created in NZ by the Palmerston North-born (in 1948) entertainer John Morrison Clarke who has established himself as a top scriptwriter and comedian in Australia since he went there to live in the late 1970s. Clarke first appeared in the Victoria University revue of 1969 and followed with a revue at Downstage Theatre in Wellington before working briefly in London in the early 1970s. He first appeared on television in a satirical sequence on a current affairs programme, Gallery, in 1973. Over the following five years, Fred Dagg — a farmer-figure in black working singlet, tattered shorts and gumboots — became the best-known character in NZ comedy. He appeared regularly on television, toured the country with a stage show, appeared in a movie, Dagg Day Afternoon, and made records, including Fred Dagg’s Greatest Hits (1975). Clarke’s prolific talent was also used on radio, a medium on which he was particularly successful when he first moved to Australia. Since then, he has discarded the Fred Dagg image and become a leading writer for film and television as well as a television performer.
text=#000000 Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937), later Baron Rutherford of Nelson, was a scientist of international acclaim, the greatest physicist of his time. He was born at Brightwater, Nelson, son of a wheelwright turned farmer, James Rutherford, who had arrived in Nelson with his family from Scotland in 1842. Ernest had 11 brothers and sisters. He was educated at Nelson College and Canterbury University. He graduated with a BA in 1892 and an MA with first-class honours in both mathematics and physics in 1893. He taught at Christchurch Boys’ High School for a year, and graduated BSc in 1894. Rutherford was one of the first graduates from an overseas university to be admitted as a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, in 1895. From 1898 until 1907 he was Professor of Physics at McGill University in Montreal, Professor of Physics at Manchester University from 1907 until 1919, and Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Cavendish Laboratory from 1919 until his death in 1937. He was interred in Westminster Abbey. Rutherford’s work in the field of nuclear physics paved the way for the atomic age. In 1913 he theorised that the atom was in fact a collection of still more minute particles behaving somewhat like planets (the electrons), spinning around a central sun (the nucleus). Six years later he detected the transmutation of one elementary material, nitrogen, into another, hydrogen, which was induced artificially when the nitrogen atom was bombarded by the natural alpha particles of radium. In 1932 Rutherford, working with others, showed that artificial transmutations could be accomplished also by using, as projectiles for the bombardment, particles of hydrogen which had been artificially accelerated to enormous speeds under the influence of a new type of electric machine, which they had developed and which is called a proton accelerator. It was this work that made Rutherford the father of nuclear physics and ushered in the atomic age. Rutherford returned to NZ for four visits, following his departure for Cambridge in 1895; in 1900 to marry his fiancée Mary Georgina Newton of Christchurch; in 1905 to visit his parents; in 1914 after attending a British Association conference in Australia, giving public lectures at Wellington and Christchurch; and in 1925 to visit his parents and to give public lectures at Auckland and Wellington, Nelson and Christchurch. Rutherford was a charming man with an expansive personality. He invested a lot of time in NZ science students in Britain, often arranging for the best of them to work with him. He was accorded honours from organisations and institutions around the world including honorary doctorates from 21 universities.
text=#000000 Sir John Logan Campbell (1817–1912) is the best remembered of Auckland’s pioneers. He was present at the founding of the city in 1840, was involved in a wide range of business enterprises as a general merchant, brewer, liquor wholesaler, wholesaler and was director of many companies in which he was an investor. He gave service to many local organisations, and made many bequests and charitable grants both when he was alive and even today through his Sir John Logan Campbell Trust. Campbell was born in Edinburgh, the son of a doctor, and graduated as a physician himself. He emigrated to Auckland as a ship’s doctor in 1839 and first arrived in NZ in 1840, at Coromandel. When they heard that the capital of the colony was to be moved to Auckland from the Bay of Islands, Campbell and his partner, William Brown, established business premises (Brown, Campbell and Co) near the beach in Commercial Bay in Auckland, about where Shortland Street is today. They were involved in the first export direct from Auckland to England, which included kauri spars, copper and manganese, aboard their ship, Bolina. Campbell retained his business interests in Auckland until his death at the age of 94. He left NZ for two years between 1848 and 1850 when he visited Scotland and then San Francisco (where he made a huge profit from a cargo of produce he took to sell during the Californian gold rush); for another two years in the 1850s when he visited India and Italy; and for some years between 1861 and 1871 when he lived in Europe, mostly in Italy. His grave is beside the obelisk on One Tree Hill in Auckland which was erected at his request, and Cornwall Park is part of his legacy to the city. Campbell’s memoirs of his early life, Poenamo, was first published in 1881, and a two-volume biography by R C J Stone was published during the 1980s.
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